The Janes

by Louisa Luna

  There was a small empty waiting room. Cap gave their names to the woman at the reception desk and asked for Jeff Collins, the bus driver. Then he and Vega stood by the door and waited for something to happen. The woman behind the desk was texting, her long nails clicking on the screen. Ten minutes passed, and Cap went back to the reception desk.

  “Hi. Me again,” he said, holding up his hand in a wave. “Does Jeff Collins know we’re waiting? Because we’ve got some time-sensitive material to discuss with him.”

  “He’s wrapping something up, sir,” she said tersely.

  She had straw-colored hair and wore such thick mascara Cap wondered if her eyelashes were false. She seemed too young to be so terse, as if she’d worked this desk for twenty years and was sick to death of people claiming they had time-sensitive material.

  Cap smiled at her and leaned on the counter that separated them.

  “I was in a car accident earlier today,” he said.

  The receptionist gaped.

  “My car went like this,” he said, twirling a pen on the counter so it spun like a pinwheel. “So I have to tell you I am acutely aware of time and how slow or fast it’s passing. You feel me?”

  “Sir—” she said, and Cap expected she would continue by adding that she most certainly did not feel him.

  Then a young, pudgy man emerged from the doorway behind the receptionist’s desk.

  “You sent by DEA?” he said by way of greeting.

  “That’s right,” said Cap. “You Jeff Collins?”

  “Yeah,” he said, reaching his hand over the counter to shake Cap’s.

  His palm was wet and warm.

  “Max Caplan,” said Cap. He turned his head toward Vega behind him. “This is Alice Vega. We have a few questions we need to ask you, Mr. Collins.”

  “It’s Agent Collins,” he said, a little embarrassed to insist that Cap respect his title.

  “Agent Collins, sure,” said Cap.

  “Follow me, okay?”

  They followed him through the doorway, where there was a cluster of cubicles surrounded by glass-doored offices along the walls. Collins led them to a cubicle and sat at the desk inside, gestured to the chair opposite him. There was only one; Cap nodded to Vega to take it. He knew she wasn’t the type to be offended but would accept to move things along. She sat.

  Cap stood against the cubicle wall, his head and shoulders well above the top edge. The whole cubicle seemed made for dwarves, which made Collins look even bloatier than he was, balancing on a too-small ergonomic office chair at a tiny desk overflowing with wrinkled manila folders.

  “So Agent Mackey didn’t keep anyone in the loop?” said Collins, adopting a teasing tone.

  “Doesn’t look like it, no,” said Cap.

  Collins laughed and took a sip of coffee from a mug in the shape of the president’s head.

  “Typical, right?” he said.

  “We wouldn’t really be able to say,” said Cap.

  “What—you guys aren’t cops?” said Collins.

  “No, we’re private investigators. Consultants.”

  Collins found this funny. He grinned knowingly.

  “Like mercenaries,” he said.

  “Sort of,” said Cap, playing along. “Agent Collins, we know that Agent Mackey sent you an email yesterday morning, telling you he needed your assistance in transporting some girls out of a house in Salton City. Can you tell us about that?”

  “Well, just what you said,” said Collins. “I’ve known Mackey awhile. DEA and ISC overlap, as you can imagine. He knows I run a lot of transportation for illegals, and he said he needed a pickup for ten girls, that he couldn’t be there so I was supposed to meet Otero and take the girls.”

  “Where did you bring them?” said Cap.

  “Some of them I brought to one of our facilities, the rest I delivered to him.”

  Collins offered this information as if it was anything but urgent. Cap met Vega’s eyes while Collins took another sip of coffee and unearthed a bear claw pastry from under the files on his desk.

  “Sorry, never got around to breakfast,” he said, taking a moist bite.

  “You brought six to the facility, is that correct?” said Cap.

  “Mmm,” said Collins, chewing, considering it. “I think so.”

  “What were their names and ages?” said Cap, taking out his phone.

  “I don’t know,” said Collins unapologetically. “Mackey texted me the names of the girls he wanted brought to him, so I brought the rest to Oren North.”

  Cap took a deep breath through his nose, fighting the impulse to knock the coffee out of Collins’s chubby hand.

  “Could we see the text, please?” asked Cap. “The names.”

  Collins shrugged, said, “Sure.” Didn’t seem to care either way.

  He picked his phone up off his desk and wiped crumbs on his pant leg before tapping on the screen.

  “Where are they?” said Cap slowly. “Where did you meet Mackey and drop off those four girls to him?”

  “So he’s really gone rogue, huh?” said Collins, still gently amused. He swallowed the chunk of the bear claw still in his mouth and said, “Just a parking lot near Holtville, east of El Centro. He packed them up in a van.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  Collins chuckled again. “No, sorry. He said he had to question them. I didn’t ask, you know. Not my business.”

  “Do you recall exactly what he said to you when you dropped off the girls?” said Cap.

  “Not his exact words,” said Collins. “He thanked me and said he’d be in touch. That’s it.”

  Cap was quiet, stunned by Collins’s complacency.

  “Any other questions?” said Collins, chipper, taking another bite of the bear claw.

  He swiped his hands together, dusting off his fingers.

  “I have one,” said Vega.

  “She talks,” Collins said to Cap, pleasantly surprised.

  He laughed with his mouth open, full of pulp.

  “I talk,” said Vega.

  She leaned forward, shifted her weight to the front of the seat.

  “Was one of the girls on your bus covered in blood?” she asked.

  “Uh,” said Collins, squinting, trying to remember. “Yeah, I think so.”

  “And that didn’t raise a flag for you to maybe ask some more questions?” she added.

  Collins’s mouth turned down in a scornful frown.

  “Hey, I did my job, like I do every day, honey,” he said, defensive now. “You don’t like it, you can lodge a complaint with Compliance.”

  Vega sat back again. A small, deferent smile crossed her face.

  “My bad,” she said. “Would you mind terribly giving us the address of this facility—Oren North, was it?”

  Collins bristled a little, still sore from Vega’s demand. He glanced up at Cap for his approval.

  “It would be really helpful,” Cap added.

  Collins wiped his hands on his pants and picked up his phone from the desk.

  “I sent you directions,” he said to Cap. “You’re not going to find it on Google Maps. I’ll let them know you’re coming, too,” Collins added, feeling magnanimous now. “The guy you want to see is Steve McConnell. I’m the only one in this field office with his info.”

  “Yeah?” said Cap. “Why’s that?”

  “It’s federally classified information. I’m the only one who needs to know, so I know. That’s why Mackey reached out to me.”

  He tapped the screen with his index finger, then set the phone back down. He took another loud slurp of coffee and stared at the phone.

  “Delivered,” he said. “You should be all set.”

  Vega turned around in her chair, asked Cap a question with her eyes.

&
nbsp; Cap glanced around the office. Most of the cubes were empty; a couple of people here and there on the phone and tapping at keyboards. One person in one of the offices with the door closed. He was changing his shoes.

  Cap looked back at Vega and gave her an encouraging nod.

  “That it?” said Collins, impatient now.

  “Think so,” said Cap.

  Vega stood, and Collins began to stand as well but Vega knocked his mug over, the coffee splattering onto his lap.

  “Fuck!” he yelled.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so clumsy.”

  “What is wrong with you?” he said, grabbing his thighs.

  “There you go. You do know how to ask questions,” she said.

  Cap looked mildly satisfied and headed out of the cubicle.

  “Get the hell outta here!” Collins yelled at her.

  He stood and hurried, stiff-legged, out of the cubicle and toward the restroom.

  Vega looked down and saw the mug staring up at her. She lifted her right knee high as it would go and brought her foot down hard, shattering the thing into five or six dull pieces.

  * * *

  —

  Cap didn’t see any other cars on the interstate. They were past Salton and El Centro, less than a mile north of the Mexican border. He peered out his window and the side mirror and rearview. There was nothing out there. He didn’t even know if he could call it the desert because it just looked like dirt with brushy shrubs here and there.

  But it was getting warmer with each mile they went inland. Even though the sky was Easter blue, there was an ominous feeling he couldn’t shake.

  “Vega,” he said, trepidatious.

  “Yeah?” she said, studying the directions on her phone.

  “We’re going to ask the six girls at this facility if they know anything about where Mackey is with the other four, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Vega. “McConnell, too. He may have something that can help us.”

  “Right,” said Cap. “So let’s say we find the four girls, the girls Perez is looking for. We’re not just going to hand them over to him, right? This is not something we can do,” he said, not sounding as confident as he had hoped.

  Vega removed her jacket and laid it on her lap. Cap saw her face lightly glossed with sweat. He could only see the corner of one of her eyes from behind her sunglasses, soft flutter of her lashes.

  “I have no intention of handing any girl over to Javier,” said Vega. “He will have to go through me. Take my eyes and my tongue and whatever else he needs to. He’s not getting those girls. Not one.”

  “Not one,” Cap repeated.

  He thought of Nell and hoped he’d see her again, hoped that he wouldn’t die in California, in the desert that may well have been Mars. But he also knew he agreed with Vega. He knew it like he knew his daughter’s name.

  They drove in silence for another ten minutes or so. FIFTEEN MILES TO YUMA read a sign.

  “We have to be close,” said Cap. “We’re not going to Arizona, right?”

  “Right,” said Vega. “Collins said there should be an unmarked road.”

  Cap could see a billboard-size sign about a hundred feet away reading THANKS FOR VISITING CALIFORNIA AND COME BACK SOON! He slowed down and looked out his window. He didn’t see the road immediately but saw a rectangular structure in the distance. It was hard to tell how far it was from the interstate, the flat land creating the illusion of it being quite close, but considering how small it appeared, about the size of a brick, it had to be at least five miles north.

  “There’s the road,” said Vega, pointing to a dirt path just big enough for a bus to fit through, tire marks on either side.

  “I guess you could call it that,” said Cap.

  He turned onto the unmarked road and drove toward the building. As they got closer he could see a tall chain-link fence, curls of barbed wire running along the top. Also an observation tower, presumably for a guard. Cap accelerated, suddenly anxious.

  “What is this place?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” said Vega, removing her sunglasses. “Looks like a prison to me.”

  Cap slowed just a bit as they approached the facility. Up close they could see that it was not one building but two rows of khaki-colored tents close together, with four white trailers on either side. There was no parking lot or security booth. Cap pulled the car up to the section of fence where there was what appeared to be a handwritten sign: EAST CA. PROCESSING.

  He parked, and they got out. Cap went right up to the sign.

  “Someone make this in their basement?” he said.

  Vega didn’t answer, just wandered to the fence and looked at everything. She saw a line of people—kids, looked to be on the young side of their teens, all boys. Guards walked in front of them and behind them, handguns holstered on their hips.

  “I’m going to wait in the car. Just watch for a while, okay?” she said.

  “Okay,” said Cap, placing his hand on the fence.

  Vega walked back to the car and got in.

  Cap watched the line of boys trailing into a tent. Most of them wore brightly colored T-shirts but some wore gray shirts with ISC printed on the back.

  “Jeff Collins send you?” said a voice from behind him.

  Cap turned around, and there was a guard with an AR-15 slung over his shoulder. He was in a blue uniform, ISC printed over the breast pocket.

  “That’s right,” said Cap curtly. “Where’s Steve McConnell?”

  The guard was unfazed by Cap’s attitude.

  “This way,” he answered.

  Cap followed him as he unlocked a padlock on the fence and opened it. He led them to one of the trailers.

  The guard knocked three times on the trailer door and then opened it. Inside it was an office space—one small conference table, three desks, wheeled chairs. No windows but there was slightly cooler air than outside circulating from a portable AC unit and a loud rotating steel fan in the corner.

  A man was there on his phone. Fifties, gray hair blending into blond on his head. Taller than Cap by an inch or two and thin but not necessarily fit. Wrinkled shirt, visible pit circles. He held up one finger to Cap.

  Cap didn’t sit in any of the seats around the conference table, stood by the door.

  McConnell said a few words, some yeps and thanks, then finally, “Bye.” He took the phone away from his ear and set it on the desk closest to him.

  “Sorry about that. Special Agent Steve McConnell,” he said, leaning over the table, shaking Cap’s hand.

  “Max Caplan,” Cap said quietly through his teeth so he would keep his temper in check.

  “Pleasure,” McConnell said, all business.

  He stayed behind the table like he was about to give a presentation. He didn’t sit, didn’t ask Cap to either.

  “What can I do for you?” he said.

  “I need to speak to the six girls that Jeff Collins dropped off here yesterday,” said Cap, taking care to speak slowly, calmly.

  McConnell’s eyes searched Cap’s face.

  “Why would you need to do that?” he asked.

  “I’m working with SDPD, as I’m sure Collins told you,” said Cap. “My partner and I need to question those girls with regard to an ongoing homicide investigation.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You have their names?”

  “We don’t know their names,” said Cap. “They are the six girls that Collins dropped off yesterday.”

  McConnell leaned on the desk, tilted his head to one side, stretching.

  “We have a lot of kids coming in,” he said. “Hard to keep track.”

  “Were you here yesterday?”

  “I’m here every day,” said McConnell. “Even on the weekends.”

  “Then you must r
emember six girls,” said Cap, even slower, even quieter. “They were in their underwear. Does this ring a bell for you?”

  McConnell stood up straight, set his hands on his hips above his belt.

  “Yeah, I think so,” he conceded, didn’t seem about to offer up anything else.

  “Good,” said Cap. “I’m sure you’re aware, then, that they had all experienced weeks, if not months, of continual sexual assault. Do you have medical resources available here?”

  McConnell sniffed loudly.

  “We have a doctor come in once a week,” he said.

  “Once a week,” Cap echoed, stunned.

  “Correct,” said McConnell. “The girls who were admitted yesterday did not appear to require immediate medical attention so we saw no need to call our MD in early.”

  Cap felt heat spread on his brow. He clenched and unclenched his fists to get the blood going in his fingers.

  “Where are they? The six girls.”

  McConnell crossed his arms.

  “Can I ask what this ongoing case is regarding?” he said.

  “You can’t, actually,” said Cap plainly. “It’s confidential. Look, it’s my understanding that ISC gets out of the PD’s and the DEA’s way. I’m working with the PD and the DEA. You can call Commander Roland Otero or Agent Christian Boyce any time you’d like for verification. My partner and I speaking with these girls is vital in preventing other girls being harmed.”

  Cap tapped the table with two fingers as he spoke. McConnell didn’t respond right away. The fan oscillated back and forth.

  “You can have an hour,” said McConnell dismissively, leaving Cap speechless again. “It’s not good for the kids if they’re out of their daily routine for any longer than that.”

  “Yeah?” said Cap. “Their daily routine looks remarkably similar to that of prisoners.”

  “Don’t get overexcited,” said McConnell, patronizing. “We’re under orders from DHS. You can name it whatever you like. These kids get three square a day and beds. It’s probably more than a lot of them had before.”